'Evil', I think you'd agree, is a strong word. So there are not many things in our lives to which we'd ascribe that label – 'evil'. A murderer, sure. A child abuser, absolutely. But stuff in our own lives? Not really.
And yet, we can all look back at some particularly bad things we've done – perhaps there are one or two still lingering in your life; husbands who unthinkingly speak harshly to their wives over and over again, day after day destroying that most precious of relationships; people in the workplace who boast and take the credit for what others have done.
We could rattle off a list as long as your arm of ordinary everyday occurrences that honestly, given their destructive impact, ought well to be labelled as 'evil'.
1 John 3:8 The devil has been sinning since the beginning. Anyone who continues to sin belongs to the devil. The Son of God came for this: to destroy the devil's work.
That's God's take on all that stuff and I think you'd agree with me, He doesn't mince His words. But the good news – the Gospel, as it's called, of Jesus Christ – is this. That He came to destroy the devil's work.
In other words, the Gospel displaces and disempowers the evil that assails us from within.
But how does that work in practice? What's the rubber-hits-the-road takeaway in your life and mine? When we let Jesus into our lives, not as some nice to have add-on, but as the One for whom we live, as the Lord of our lives … this is what He does. He destroys the devil's work from within.
After all, that's what He came to do.
And that's God's Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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